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by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Character A finds Character B fainted and has no idea how long they've been out, Character is Exhausted From Overwork, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23609116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Post-shooting, Jack overworks himself.
Relationships: Peggy Carter & Daniel Sousa & Jack Thompson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 109
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [alessandriana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandriana/gifts).



It was achingly early when Peggy walked into the nearly deserted bullpen at the West Coast SSR, Daniel a few steps behind her; she was still smiling at his terrible jokes on the stairs, and then grimaced at the sight of the stripe of light under the door of the hastily cleaned-out file storage room that Jack was using as his interim office.

"Are you kidding me?" Daniel said. "Is he here still, or here again?"

Ever since getting out of the hospital -- and actually, even before, to the extent it was possible -- Jack had thrown himself into running down leads on his own shooting. He'd been poring over files in his sickroom at Howard's mansion, but now that he had (at his own insistence) moved out into a hotel, Peggy had no way to keep track of his comings and goings. Not that she particularly _wanted_ to, but she was going to be quite put out if the man overworked himself back into a hospital bed after everyone had put so much effort into saving his life. It was really quite disrespectful.

"At least we have enough pastries to share," she remarked, nodding to the small stack of boxes she and Daniel were carrying between them. Daniel, she'd learned, was a sometimes absent-minded but conscientious boss, and there were times when he would do something like this -- picking up pastries from the bakery down the street for the morning staff to share around the office.

Daniel set down his boxes on the nearest desk. Peggy followed suit, but took a box and went off to make sure Jack wasn't trying to sleep in his office again.

This feeling of working around the clock, with hardly time to pause and draw breath, had begun with her move to LA and had never really stopped. There was just so much to _do,_ between cleaning house at the SSR, chasing down Arena Club stragglers, and trying to unravel the increasingly complex conspiracy behind Jack's shooting, all with a badly depleted skeleton staff. That was part of the reason why Jack hadn't headed back to the West Coast yet -- well, that and the fact that he was dead set on finding out who'd shot him, and all the leads were here, cold though they were.

Still, one would think that a man who'd been on death's doorstep barely more than a month ago would have the sense to rest before he put himself back in hospital.

Peggy tapped on the door and then, since it wasn't quite latched, pushed it open. The desk was piled with a litter of file folders and surveillance photos, with Jack hunched over them.

"I'm going to hope you haven't been here all night," she said.

Jack grunted and slid a handful of photos into an envelope. "Good morning to you too, Marge."

"Good morning." She opened the pink box. "I brought donuts."

This made him look up from the files. "Where is Peggy and what have you done with her? Help!" he added, in a voice that rasped slightly when he raised it. "Sousa! There's a Russian spy pretending to be Peggy in here!"

"All right then," Peggy said, snapping the box shut. "More for us."

"Wait, no -- was that a bear claw in there?"

Peggy cleared off a space for the box among the clutter, and leaned her hip against the edge of his desk. She glanced at the litter of photos from recent SSR surveillance details on various persons of interest, but more than that, she looked at Jack.

He probably had gone back to his hotel last night at some point, because she was pretty sure he hadn't been wearing that slightly garish red and blue tie yesterday. Also, he'd shaved and slicked down his hair, but it didn't really do much more than emphasize the general impression that he was held together mostly with aftershave and willpower. His hand on the donut box trembled slightly.

"Are you going to bring me coffee too?" Jack asked. He took a bite, but she was not oblivious to the fact that he was nibbling, not eating with any particular appetite. 

"Well, not _now."_ She reached for one of the cream-filled ones. "You're going to work yourself straight back into a hospital bed if you keep this up, you know."

"Thanks, Carter. Don't know how I got along without you to nag me."

"It's not nagging to point out when you're making terrible decisions."

He started to answer, but coughed and took a sharp breath and pressed his hand to his chest. Peggy gave him a look.

"I'm fine," Jack said, when he could speak again.

"Yes, I can see that."

"If you need work to do, Carter, you do still technically work for me."

"I have plenty of work of my own, thank you," Peggy said, and betook herself off to the bullpen. Daniel waved to her from his office. She waved back, got another donut, and went to settle down with the stack of employment applications she'd been working on yesterday. They were going to have to hire people to replace the two-thirds of their staff who had been swept out after being hopelessly tainted by Vernon, and Daniel had asked for her input on his picks. She got a pencil and started scribbling notes.

She liked working early, when there were few people in the office and she could concentrate without being continually interrupted. On the other hand, this was incredibly tedious, and she went through two cups of strong tea before she'd finally had enough. She went to give Daniel her notes, but found that he wasn't in his office. 

She left the files on the edge of his desk, and went down the hall to the canteen. No Daniel there either; he was probably running around the building somewhere, or maybe in Jack's office. They'd all been working together closely on the shooting case, especially since it was difficult, these days, to know who to trust besides each other.

Strange to think she counted Jack among those people, especially after all that had happened. But, well. Different times.

She poured a cup of coffee and added a bit of cream, the way he liked it, as she knew all too well from those days when she'd had to memorize the coffee preferences of every male agent in the office. He _hadn't_ asked it of her, not seriously anyway, in a long time ... since coming back from Belarus, actually. She made herself another cup of tea and went down the hall to his office.

"Jack?" she said, rapping with the knuckles of the hand holding the tea cup. "Chief Thompson?"

The door was as she'd left it, mostly closed but not latched, and she nudged it open. There was no sign of Jack at his desk, and it wasn't a large office. "Chief Thompson --" she began, and then she caught sight of him.

On the floor.

"Jack!"

He was sprawled in a cascade of papers that suggested he had been getting up from his desk, or perhaps standing at it, and had swept them off when he fell. For a shocked instant, Peggy was actually frozen in place. She hadn't seen him immediately after the shooting, but this was all too much like the pictures her mind had conjured during those long days of waiting for him to wake up.

Could someone have gotten in, past Rose downstairs, past the SSR's security --

"Jack, you utter wanker," Peggy muttered. She dropped to her knees beside him and set the cups hastily aside to free up her hands. He was very pale, his skin clammy and cool to the touch. She felt for a pulse -- rapid and weak, but present -- and loosened his tie. She hesitated, then began to unbutton his shirt.

"Hey, your Chiefliness," Daniel said from the doorway, "are you in here? Jack -- whoa, Peggy, what's going on?"

"Daniel, could you please fetch a blanket from the break room?" Peggy said without looking around.

"Uh -- yeah. Yeah, on it."

His crutch clicked rapidly away. Peggy opened Jack's shirt to examine the undershirt beneath. There was no spreading blood stain; he hadn't reopened his wound, and he didn't appear to have been freshly stabbed or shot while the rest of them sat and chatted in the bullpen.

Although that didn't rule out poison ...

"Ugh ... what ..." Jack mumbled in a creaky whisper. He stirred, and pushed at her. "Peggy?"

"Got a blanket and also a first-aid kit," Daniel said from the doorway. Clearly she wasn't the only one who had thought of the possibility of Jack reopening his wound.

"I'm fine," Jack muttered.

"Clearly," Peggy said.

Daniel came in and shut the door. It was cramped in here with the three of them, especially with Daniel's crutch, which he promptly set right into the cup of tea on the floor.

"Sorry, Peg."

"Don't worry about it." Peggy held up a hand for the blanket. Daniel gave it to her, then put the crutch in the corner, leaned a hand on the wall, and lowered himself to sit on the floor. He tugged off his jacket and Peggy shoved it under Jack's head and pushed him back down when he tried to sit up.

"I'm being abducted," Jack said faintly, trying to struggle.

"You're going to stay there for five minutes if we have to sit on you," Daniel said. 

Some of the color began to come back to his cheeks, and he was able to sit up in a few moments, assisted by Daniel while Peggy scooted herself around his desk to reach the bottom drawers. She had to open two of them before she found what she was sure was there: a half-empty bottle of bourbon. She poured a generous dose into the cup of coffee and pressed it into Jack's cold, shaking hands.

"This smells strong enough to wake up an elephant," Jack said, through chattering teeth.

"Good, then drink it, it'll warm you up."

"So is anyone going to tell me in the heck happened?" Daniel asked.

To be fair, he'd just walked in on Peggy kneeling above an unconscious Jack. Peggy looked at Jack, who looked ... helpless, almost. Like he genuinely didn't know how to answer that question. She found herself with the sudden urge to protect his dignity, even from Daniel.

"Jack had a bit of a dizzy spell, that's all," she said. "I gave him a hand to lie down. And I mention this," she added, while Jack looked vastly grateful, "in the expectation that he'll do the sensible thing and continue to lie down for the rest of the morning," and Jack's grateful look dissolved into belligerence. Well, at least he was feeling well enough to push back.

"The hell he will," Daniel said, and Peggy looked at him, startled at Daniel overruling her in such a fashion. "Jack, I need your input on our new hires. Peggy was just going over the files this morning -- how far did you get, Peggy?"

"I got through the better part of them," she said, giving him a look: _What are you about?_ Daniel just raised his eyebrows at her and then got to his feet carefully, pulling himself up on the edge of the desk.

"So there's work to do," Daniel said. "The last thing we want to do is stick more of Vernon's guys back into the organization, and there's a danger of Leviathan moles as well. You've done more of this than I have. I could use your help." 

And he held a hand down to Jack.

Jack looked confused, but after a moment he clasped Daniel's hand, grimaced and struggled his way to his feet.

To give him credit, he didn't immediately keel over, though Peggy noticed he lost most of his recently acquired color. They all went back to Daniel's office. Peggy took the chair in front of Daniel's desk, leaving Jack the couch, and Peggy thought she might know what Daniel was about, after all.

"Leviathan moles, huh," Jack said, accepting the stack of files Peggy passed over to him.

"It's a possibility," Daniel said, taking the stack of notes Peggy had left for him. "Thanks, Peggy."

Peggy leaned forward and retrieved the next batch of personnel files from Daniel's desk. She looked over at Jack, who had stretched out on the couch.

It took him all of five minutes to fall asleep.

Peggy went down the hall to retrieve the blanket, left rumpled on the floor in Jack's office. She also scooped up the more relevant-looking of the surveillance photo stacks.

Jack didn't move when she covered him with the blanket.

"You are a very sneaky man, Daniel Sousa," Peggy said, taking the desk chair again.

"Don't you know it." He nodded to the envelopes in her hand. "What you got there?"

"Surveillance photos. Jack was sorting through them."

"Well," Daniel said, "he's helping us with the personnel files. It's only fair."

Peggy grinned, and spread them out on Daniel's cluttered desk.


End file.
